[Info-vax] The changing world

[John Wallace]

On 06/07/2022 21:19, Dave Froble wrote:
> On 7/6/2022 1:35 PM, Simon Clubley wrote:
>> On 2022-07-05, Phillip Helbig (undress to reply) 
>> <helbig at asclothestro.multivax.de> wrote:
>>>
>>> Get your facts straight.  While the Green party has always been
>>> anti-nuke, the decision to phase out nuclear power quickly was taken by
>>> the Merkel government (of which the Greens were not a part), a reaction
>>> to Fukushima.
>>>
>>
>> Yes, because Germany is so well-known for its volcanoes, earthquakes and
>> tidal waves. :-)
>>
>> Fukushima didn't seem to bother your next-door neighbours, the French...
>>
>> Simon.
>>
> 
> Well, it really depends on circumstances ...
> 
> Fukushima became a problem when there became a need for some generators. 
> Otherwise, the outcome would have been much less of a disaster.
> 
> Now, is anyone going to try to tell me that in the whole country of 
> Japan there was not one generator that could have been provided?  
> Perhaps moved on a military helicopter.  With a whole 24 hours to do so?
> 
> Or, was it perhaps someone didn't want to "lose face" and would not ask 
> for help?
> 
> So, perhaps it depends on whether the Germans can be trusted to reliably 
> run a nuclear power station?
> 
> Or perhaps another example was Three Mile Island, where the folks 
> refused to believe a valve was open, and refused to try to close it 
> because anyone could see it had to be already closed.  That worked 
> well.  Poorly trained operators.
> 
> Anything can be fucked up, unless the idiots are kept away from it.
> 

I'm sorry Dave, I'm afraid I can't accept that (comment re generators).

In almost every major incident involving aircraft, spacecraft, safety 
critical process systems and related stuff, it takes *multiple* 
nominally-independent failures for serious trouble to occur.

Fukushima was preventable. Availability of standby power, and backup 
control and automation systems above probable flood levels, would have 
helped, as would various other design, management, and operational changes.

There were even issues that were fairly basic and already known about 
e.g. ensuring that scheduled maintenance (e.g. of onsite standby 
generators and related equipment) was properly carried out; TEPCO had 
already had their wrists slapped for that on multiple occasions.

Then there was the known vulnerability to overtopping in the event of a 
tsunami. The design assumptions at the time the station was built were 
already known to be inadequate. Real experience and world wide risk 
analysis of potentially vulnerable plant had shown that Fukushima was at 
significant risk from a "once in forty years" event. Folks seem to have 
assumed that "once in forty years" meant "won't happen for forty years", 
and then tuck their heads in the sand?

It's reasonably well documented; one of the best analyses I've seen is 
freely available at:
https://carnegieendowment.org/2012/03/06/why-fukushima-was-preventable-pub-47361

It's relatively non technical: here's a sample:

The Fukushima accident was, however, preventable. Had the plant’s owner, 
Tokyo Electric Power Company (TEPCO), and Japan’s regulator, the Nuclear 
and Industrial Safety Agency (NISA), followed international best 
practices and standards, it is conceivable that they would have 
predicted the possibility of the plant being struck by a massive 
tsunami. The plant would have withstood the tsunami had its design 
previously been upgraded in accordance with state-of-the-art safety 
approaches.

The methods used by TEPCO and NISA to assess the risk from tsunamis 
lagged behind international standards in at least three important respects:

  1) Insufficient attention was paid to evidence of large tsunamis 
inundating the region surrounding the plant about once every thousand years.

  2) Computer modeling of the tsunami threat was inadequate. Most 
importantly, preliminary simulations conducted in 2008 that suggested 
the tsunami risk to the plant had been seriously underestimated were not 
followed up and were only reported to NISA on March 7, 2011.

3) NISA failed to review simulations conducted by TEPCO and to foster 
the development of appropriate computer modeling tools.


At the time of the accident, critical safety systems in nuclear power 
plants in some countries, especially in European states, were—as a 
matter of course—much better protected than in Japan. Following a 
flooding incident at Blayais Nuclear Power Plant in France in 1999, 
European countries significantly enhanced their plants’ defenses against 
extreme external events. Japanese operators were aware of this 
experience, and TEPCO could and should have upgraded Fukushima Daiichi.

Steps that could have prevented a major accident in the event that the 
plant was inundated by a massive tsunami, such as the one that struck 
the plant in March 2011, include:

1) Protecting emergency power supplies, including diesel generators and 
batteries, by moving them to higher ground or by placing them in 
watertight bunkers;

2) Establishing watertight connections between emergency power supplies 
and key safety systems; and

3) Enhancing the protection of seawater pumps (which were used to 
transfer heat from the plant to the ocean and to cool diesel generators) 
and/or constructing a backup means to dissipate heat.

Though there is no single reason for TEPCO and NISA’s failure to follow 
international best practices and standards, a number of potential 
underlying causes can be identified. NISA lacked independence from both 
the government agencies responsible for promoting nuclear power and also 
from industry. In the Japanese nuclear industry, there has been a focus 
on seismic safety to the exclusion of other possible risks. Bureaucratic 
and professional stovepiping made nuclear officials unwilling to take 
advice from experts outside of the field. Those nuclear professionals 
also may have failed to effectively utilize local knowledge. And, 
perhaps most importantly, many believed that a severe accident was 
simply impossible.

In the final analysis, the Fukushima accident does not reveal a 
previously unknown fatal flaw associated with nuclear power. Rather, it 
underscores the importance of periodically reevaluating plant safety in 
light of dynamic external threats and of evolving best practices, as 
well as the need for an effective regulator to oversee this process.

(continues)

Plenty similar elsewhere.